... arboreal niches were more effective in slowing and redirecting descent compared with other salamanders. Aneides vagrans and the closely related Aneides lugubris consistently engaged in parachuting and gliding when falling; their trajectories were very steep, but were sufficiently angled to enable contact...

...Farid Jafari; Daniel Holden; Roderick LaFoy; Pavlos P. Vlachos; John J. Socha ABSTRACT Flying snakes flatten their body to form a roughly triangular cross-sectional shape, enabling lift production and horizontal acceleration. While gliding, they also assume an S -shaped posture, which could promote...

... accumulate less fuel than species with low wing aspect ratio when covering a similar migration distance. Continuously flapping species accumulate the largest amounts of fuel, followed by flapping and soaring species and flapping and gliding species, while the smallest fuel loads were observed in birds...

...Makoto A. Yoshida; Daisuke Yamamoto; Katsufumi Sato ABSTRACT The employment of gliding in aquatic animals as a means of conserving energy has been theoretically predicted and discussed for decades. Several studies have shown that some species glide, whereas others do not. Freshwater fish species...

... are not fully understood. Here, we address the role of visual contrast for DAD in newly hatched nymphs of the stick insect Extatosoma tiaratum under controlled laboratory conditions. Landing preferences of gliding E. tiaratum in various visual environments were studied. We used a single vertical stripe defined...

...Daniel Holden; John J. Socha; Nicholas D. Cardwell; Pavlos P. Vlachos A prominent feature of gliding flight in snakes of the genus Chrysopelea is the unique cross-sectional shape of the body, which acts as the lifting surface in the absence of wings. When gliding, the flying snake Chrysopelea...

...Kentaro Q. Sakamoto; Akinori Takahashi; Takashi Iwata; Takashi Yamamoto; Maki Yamamoto; Philip N. Trathan SUMMARY Albatrosses are known to expend only a small amount of energy during flight. The low energy cost of albatross flight has been attributed to energy-efficient gliding (soaring...

...Hannah G. Rosenblum; John H. Long, Jr; Marianne E. Porter SUMMARY Unlike most batoid fishes, electric rays neither oscillate nor undulate their body disc to generate thrust. Instead they use body–caudal–fin (BCF) locomotion. In addition, these negatively buoyant rays perform unpowered glides...

... fish has evolved to have good aerodynamic designs (such as the hypertrophied fins and cylindrical body with a ventrally flattened surface) for proficient gliding flight. Hence, the morphological and behavioral adaptations of flying fish to aerial locomotion have attracted great interest from various...

...Kristin L. Bishop SUMMARY Gliding has often been discussed in the literature as a possible precursor to powered flight in vertebrates, but few studies exist on the mechanics of gliding in living animals. In this study I analyzed the 3D kinematics of sugar gliders ( Petaurus breviceps ) during short...

...Keith E. Paskins; Adrian Bowyer; William M. Megill; John S. Scheibe SUMMARY Flying squirrels are well known for their ability to glide between trees at the top of a forest canopy. We present experimental performance and behavioural evidence that flight in flying squirrels may have evolved out...

... than expected for all except white sheets. Glide performance was highly variable,but there was a tendency for higher glide indices to be associated with the white sheet relative to the green sheet. We conclude that visually mediated aerial behavior in falling canopy ants is strongly influenced...

...Kristin L. Bishop SUMMARY Gliding is the simplest form of flight, yet relatively little is known about its mechanics in animals. The goal of this study was to describe the body position and performance of a gliding mammal and to identify correlates between kinematics and aerodynamic performance...

... found the inertial drag coefficient using the equation for the inverse of the first integral of the equation of motion for a gliding animal ( Bilo and Nachtigall, 1980 ): 5 \batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath...

... to analyze patterns of position,glide angle and speed concurrently with changes in body posture in 14 glide sequences from different individuals. C. paradisi 's trajectory was composed of a ballistic dive followed by a shallowing phase in which the path became more horizontal; for most glide trials...

...John J. Socha; Michael LaBarbera SUMMARY Aerial locomotion in snakes (genus Chrysopelea ) is kinematically distinct from any other type of gliding or powered flight, with prominent,high amplitude body undulations visually dominating the behavior. Because it is not known how flying snakes produce...

... gliding penguins can move horizontally with minimum stroking effort before reaching the surface. The present study indicates that macaroni penguins exhibited steep body angles during ascent and subsequent descent after they had a long bottom phase and that they maintained shallow body angles after...

...Richard L. Essner, Jr SUMMARY Leaping, parachuting and gliding are the primary means by which arboreal squirrels negotiate gaps in the canopy. There are notable differences among the three locomotor modes with respect to mid-air postures and aerodynamics,yet it is unclear whether variation should...

...MICHAEL G. McCAY SUMMARY Gliding has evolved independently in two families of tree frog. Tree frogs glide to descend rapidly to mating sites over temporary pools on the forest floor or to escape predators. The physical mechanisms used by frogs to glide and maneuver were investigated using...

...Mikael Rosén; Anders Hedenström ABSTRACT We examined the gliding flight performance of a jackdaw Corvus monedula in a wind tunnel. The jackdaw was able to glide steadily at speeds between 6 and 11 m s −1 . The bird changed its wingspan and wing area over this speed range, and we measured the so...